Marketing on TripAdvisor: why it is important for restaurants and hotels

Do you have a restaurant? Find out why it is important to implement a Marketing strategy on TripAdvisor.

Carrying out Marketing activities on TripAdvisor will enable you to find new customers for your restaurant.

Over 700 million pieces of user-generated content. A platform that, in recent times, has evolved into a social network to acquire its essential dynamics.

TripAdvisor, the portal founded on the brainchild of Stephen Kaufer, comes of age and gets a complete makeover.

The platform’s goal was to help users choose dining and vacation destinations by posting reviews related to hotels and restaurants.

To date, in order not to lose ground in the digital world, it becomes much more like a social platform such as Facebook, both aesthetically and functionally.

Users will be able to continue writing their reviews, but in addition they will be able to post photos, videos, links, and you can decide to follow specific people in turn: friends, influencers or strangers.
You will be able to like content and more.

By now there are a number of companies, hotels, bars and restaurants, that carry out marketing activities on TripAdvisor. The goals are many:

To improve one’s visibility among users registered on the platform;
To increase the number of bookings and contacts, including through seamless integration with The Fork;
To incentivize the number of positive reviews and increase walkability;
To demonstrate excellence;
To improve one’s Brand Awareness.

TripAdvisor has become a powerful tool for users and restaurateurs

A study published by ComScore, commissioned by TripAdvisor, showed that 60 percent of world travelers, and 77 percent of Italians, have searched for and booked travel online at least once in their lifetime.

The report’s findings show that, on average, travelers plan a trip within a one-month time frame, and during this period, TripAdvisor’s influence on flight, hotel, and restaurant booking decisions is very strong.

This offers significant opportunities for companies engaged in food & travel to engage travelers on TripAdvisor at a stage of high influencability, especially through adv, metasearch, and Business Advantage products.

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, hotels, resorts and restaurants are looking for innovative ways to engage travelers, differentiate themselves from competitors and increase conversions.

The new TripAdvisor, which is much more like a real social network, will therefore allow new techniques to work alongside the platform’s more “traditional” ones, such as ADV and sponsored content.

In particular, restaurants can activate a premium profile to open themselves up to the world: a particularly representative review can be highlighted, patrons can be given three reasons why they like the establishment, and last but certainly not least, the feature allows them to create a multimedia storyboard to initiate interesting storytelling projects.

Marketing on TripAdvisor: how is the platform changing?

Although the underlying philosophy has evolved, the essence of TripAdvisor remains the same: that of being a portal through which to make recommendations about a restaurant or tourist facility, but in revised and modernized ways.

What convinces little, at least from the user side, is that if before it was the entire community that made the difference, now a massive emergence of influencers could take place whose judgments could reward or besmirch a restaurant or hotel.
After all, you know, the number of followers is always a tempting factor when choosing a testimonial for one’s establishment, but there are other factors to take into account: one above all, ethics.

In TripAdvisor as it was, the more reviews one wrote, the more trustworthy one was deemed to be. There were no followers to be counted, and photographs (while often ugly) were meaningful because they had no filter.
Now we may be seeing a new phenomenon of influencer marketing related specifically to the food & travel industry, somewhat like what happens on Instagram.

Influencer marketing on the new TripAdvisor

Of course, it is certainly premature to talk about influencer marketing for a newly renovated platform, but it is necessary to start thinking ahead. It must be said that even before there was no shortage of “hoax” reviews, bought to discredit the competition, but this has already been taken care of by the judiciary with a ruling.

Precisely because within a short period of time we may see the explosion of the TripAdvisor influencer phenomenon, here are some useful tips for not arriving unprepared:

search for users in your area and monitor activities, taking advantage of the “recommended for you” section;
don’t dwell on the number of followers, but check the reviews left for other facilities and theengagement generated by the content posted;
once you have chosen the right influencer for your venue, get them to give a review that is authentic and in line with your offering;
Be ethical and don’t use influencers to make your competitors look bad.

The third tip, I would recommend, is critical. TripAdvisor is made up of people who want to dine somewhere different or spend an unforgettable vacation. Posting content that strays from what is reality could lead to a negative web stream, resulting in discredit from other disappointed users.

What to expect from the new TripAdvisor?

The platform has radically changed our travel habits, spurring the spread of do-it-yourself vacations with less risk. Certainly TripAdvisor, with its more than 702 million reviews, needed to renew itself.

Today, when accessing the app or website, one has the impression of being on a social, where information flows toward in an endless stream and where each user has his or her own profile in which to post various items, including trips, videos, photos, and links that can be commented on and shared. We will be watching for the next developments.

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